Microsoft Word

Updated Microsoft Office 365 icons have started appearing in the preview ‘fast track’ Office 365 for Windows and we could not be more excited. No … not really. When it comes to changed Office icons; if we were more apathetic, we’d be in a coma. Office 365 icons for Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint on […]

A long-standing and unpatched problem in Office provides a stealthy doorway to other security problems in Office with Equation Editor already being targeted. Mimecast discovered an undocumented behavior in OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) which is a doorway into security bugs in Office. It isn’t a security problem on its own, instead it’s a sneaky […]

How to insert the Registered Trade Mark ® currency symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Registered Trade Mark ® not to be confused with the Unregistered Trade Mark ™ symbol Registered Trade Mark ® codes These are the important code numbers or values you’ll […]

Type the Trademark ™ TM symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Trademark ™ TM symbol is, strictly speaking, called the Unregistered Trademark symbol. Its counterpart is the Registered Trademark ® Trademark in Word and Outlook The Trademark ™ sign has an inbuilt shortcut in […]

Let’s look at the basic options for making a Table of Contents (TOC) in a Word document. The basic TOC options haven’t changed for a long time. The look of the dialog boxes and galleries changed with Word 2007 however under those superficial features, the fundamentals are the same. Table of Contents is very easy […]

Like many things in Microsoft Word, there is more than one way to add a PDF file into a Word document. From a simple link to another file to converting the PDF into a Word document. Here’s three ways to add a PDF into your Word document. In most cases you’ll link to a PDF […]

Inserting a link to a PDF (or any other file) into a Word document or email is easy to do. All you need is the web link to the PDF and paste it into your document or email. The key question to ask is ‘Where is the PDF located or saved to?’. Next question is […]

Color fonts are coming to Microsoft Office and Windows but progress is slow and patchy. Here’s a quick summary of color fonts and the occasional, erratic support in Outlook, Word and other Office programs. What are color fonts Since the beginning of Mac and Windows we’ve had single color fonts. Usually black but can be […]

Transform in Word 365 for Windows converts a document into a versatile web page hosted by Microsoft on it’s Sway service. It’s also available from Word Online but only for school or work accounts. What Sway Transform is NOT Word’s Transform is promoted as converting a Word document to a Web Page but it does […]

Word for Windows has three options for saving a document to a web page, Web Page, Single Web Page or Web Page, Filtered. Here’s a look at all three and how to choose the best option for you. What you choose depends on how much similarity you need between the Word document and the web […]

Type the Yen ¥ currency symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Yen is used for Japanese currency and sometimes other currencies like the Chinese Renminbi / Yuan. ¥ symbol is easy on some keyboards but for most there’s no specific key for Yen. Word […]

The Microsoft Office Home Use Program (HUP) is a great way to save on Office 365 or Office 2019 for employees of many companies, organizations, governments and even some military personnel. Here’s details on the savings possible with the recent changes to the HUP. What’s changed? The Home Use Program (HUP) is changing to the […]

Here’s who can qualify for cheaper Office 365 Home or Personal under the revised Home Use Program and how to get the lower prices. Employer qualification Your employer must have a Microsoft Office Volume Licence agreement with Software Assurance Maintenance (SAM). If Office is widespread in your organization it’s likely they have a volume licence, […]

The new Home Use Program offers 30% discounts to employees of many organizations which have Volume Licence agreements with Software Assurance for Microsoft Office. Here’s what we know about how the new Home Use Program works, the tricks and traps. Office 365 plans with Home Use Program Both retail Office 365 plans are available at […]

How to insert the Pound £ currency symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. £ symbol is easy on a UK keyboard but for other keyboards there’s no specific key for Pound. Pound is used for British Pounds Sterling and also other ‘pound’ currencies like […]

How to type the Cent symbol ¢ into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook plus any Windows program. Word and Outlook The Cent ¢ symbol has an inbuilt shortcut in Word and Outlook: Ctrl + /, C Hold down the Ctrl key while pressing / then type C (upper or lower case). Alternatively use the […]

The current Home Use Program with Office 2019 sold for a mere $15 is about to end. If you want the perpetual licence Office 2019 for Windows or Mac, you’d better hurry. The full impact of the changed Office Home Use Program (HUP) is becoming clear. We’ve already noted that Office 365 subscriptions are becoming […]

2019 is the 150th anniversary for the Periodic Table of Elements. There are some great Periodic Tables available in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. There are many Periodic Table ‘documents’ on the net but most are PDF’s or images. We’re looking for editable documents that you can adapt, recolor or redesign to suit […]

The latest Microsoft Office promotion is a rare example of an ad which shows how a product was deliberately crippled with less features. The ‘Twins Challenge’ is a series of very selective videos that are supposed to highlight differences between Office 2019 (single purchase, less profitable for Microsoft) and Office 365 (annual payment, highly profitable). […]

There are three different ways to change an Office icon or SVG graphic. The two official methods with their in-built limitations or some choices before inserting into Office. Within Office Limited SVG/Icon changes are available from the Graphics Tools | Format tab. In this article we’re using an SVG from Wikipedia which has the features […]

Some simple changes to SVG graphics can bypass some of the more annoying limits of SVG support in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Office 2019/365. Here’s a simple SVG with three parts: the circle <circle> the rectangle <path id=”bar” …> letters are defined in other <path … > and <use …> statements. In this article […]

There are a lot more Office Icon or SVG graphics available than the ones in Office. Office 365 and 2019 has Icons which is Microsoft’s name for SVG graphics. You can find Microsoft’s gallery of SVG graphics at Insert | Icons. That’s just a fraction of what’s available. There are a lot more SVG’s available […]

There’s now a proper digital font version of the typeface used on US National Park signs. It’ll work with Office for Windows or Mac. The original signs were hand-carved with a router bit. At https://nationalparktypeface.com/ there are four options available: Light, Regular, Heavy and Outline. They are available as a free download under a SIL […]

Many new emoji are now in the official Unicode list but we’ll have to wait for them to appear in Word or Outlook emails. After the Unicode Consortium ratifies additions to the vast character list, it takes some time for Microsoft, Apple and others to add the emoji to their fonts. The 2019 Emoji list […]

Office 365 is getting yet another way to save a document and it’s not as bad as the advance publicity suggested. We’ve now had a chance to use the new Save dialog ourselves and it’s not another attempt to force customers to OneDrive. The change is now available for Office Fast Insiders and eventually all […]

Here’s a quick and easy way to totally erase file, folders or free disk space so there’s no trace of the original data. Also erasing an entire drive before handing over or selling. As you may know, deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from your computer. Even after deleting from the Recycle Bin, the […]

It’s the Chinese Year of the Pig and there are some symbols in Word, Excel and PowerPoint to mark the occasion in Office for Windows or Mac. The Unicode standard has three Pig related emoji, Pig, Pig Face and Pig Nose. Once you know the names or hex value, they can be found with the […]

Type or enter the ° Degree symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Windows programs generally. Degree ° is a common symbol and should be available in most fonts. If not, try another font or one of the fonts with a very wide range of characters like Arial Unicode MS or Ludica Sans Unicode. Typing […]

If the Translation options in Microsoft Office don’t do it for you, try the Google Translate full document translation option instead. For a long time, Google has a word and text translation between languages. The app is a godsend to travelers around the world, and the locals dealing with them! Entire Office documents can also […]

Bitlocker is an important part of Microsoft Windows so why isn’t it in the Microsoft Word dictionary? Bitlocker is the drive encryption feature in modern Windows. It secures your drive if stolen or lost because the entire drive is unreadable without the password. Our books for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 have chapters devoted to […]

There’s a simple Microsoft Word trick that lets you shrink the vertical space between lines. Reducing below single line spacing. To set less than 1 line space go to Paragraph | Line Spacing and choose ‘Multiple’ – yes ‘Multiple’. Sounds screwy but it works. Set the Multiple line spacing value to less than one eg 0.7 […]

A Canadian man has been caught trying to hide assets from bankruptcy because the wrong fonts were used in documents. Gerald McGoey, the former CEO of Look Communications filed for bankruptcy over a year ago. He presented trust documents that appeared to shield two properties from his creditors. But there was a problem with both […]

Many Word users are reporting Booklet printing options after the January 2019 updates to Office. No word from Microsoft but we have some suggested workarounds. All sorts of problems are being reported, mostly missing or blank pages in a booklet. The best workaround is using Adobe Reader which also has a Booklet printing feature with […]

Microsoft Word has a booklet printing option but there’s a simple alternative if it’s not working. Word’s Booklet Printing is done in the document (Layout | Paragraph | Page Setup | Multiple Pages | Book Fold. But that method might not suit you or Word isn’t booklet printing properly (as happened with the January 2019 […]

An astonishingly simple security breach in Microsoft Office has finally been patched two months after Microsoft confirmed the problem. The unanswered question, why did it take so long to discover it? Mimecast.com discovered the ActiveX memory leak back in November 2018 and told Microsoft. Two months later Microsoft fixed the problem in their January 2019 […]

Managing Styles and priority settings in Word for Mac is harder but possible if you’re willing to dig in document or template settings. Word for Mac has two style lists available, just like Word for Windows. The Quick Style Gallery across the ribbon Home tab (called Style Gallery in WinWord) and the Styles pane that […]

Changing the order of styles in Word’s Style Gallery is possible but buried way down inside the message boxes. A standard Word Style Gallery looks like this. Right-clicking on a style gives some options, including Remove from Style Gallery. Moving the styles into another order is more complicated. You’d think modern Word would let you […]

Font Embedding is an important part of document portability. It’s available in Microsoft Word for Windows and has (finally) been added Font Embedding to Word for Mac. When you share a document or even move to another computer, it does NOT include the necessary fonts. Word assumes that all the needed fonts will be installed […]

The British Army has new recruitment posters for Millennials or ‘Snow Flakes’. Make your own versions in Microsoft Office with either Word or PowerPoint. The campaign targets “snowflakes”, “millennials” and “selfie addicts” with a call-back to the famous Lord Kitchener “Your Country needs YOU” poster. Here’s our re-creation in Microsoft Word as it might appear […]

Reducing the line spacing or vertical gap between lines in Word paragraphs can be done in six different ways depending on the situation Adjusting line spacing to put lines very close isn’t usually necessary for regular text. It becomes useful when trying some design tricks for headings, for example the title in our Millennium poster. […]